Grace Cummings – Refuge Cove
Flightless Records – 1 November 2019
Good luck searching for clues to Grace Cummings. Almost nothing has been written about her. Which makes her debut album, Refuge Cove all the more exceptional. Signed to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard drummer Eric Moore’s Flightless label, Melbourne’s Cummings has a voice that demands to be heard, while her lyrics cut through to the heart, leaving listeners gasping for air.
The folky blend of guitar, electric lead, and Dylan-ish harmonica of The Look You Gave offers one notion of what is to follow. The lyrics, however, suggest something very different, “the feather in my cap is blown away in an ocean of cold as the look you gave.” Not exactly the sort of thing you expect from your typical singer/songwriter.
But the last thing Grace Cummings wants is to be typical.
From the broad strokes of There Flies A Seagull what emerges is something quite different from expectations. Cummings contralto fills the room taking up enormous amounts of space, yet the interplay between guitar and voice match perfectly. Listening to the lyrics though, what emerges doesn’t match the notion of a singer/songwriter, “There flies a seagull, shoot it down, so you might smile, so you might be happy now.” As Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
The cover of Refuge Cove features Grace in black against a black background, cigarette in hand. It’s the kind of image one associates with someone from a bygone era like Marlene Dietrich. Definitely not the sort of image that is politically correct these days. Which is actually the point. We are far beyond all that. And as Grace plays thick chords, her smoky voice emerges to sing, “Stop your pissing in the wind, it’s dark outside again.” Perhaps this is the beginning of a whole new strain of music – uneasy listening. Beyond the beauty, there is also a sense of foreboding, a metaphor of these times that aren’t quite right.
Grace Cummings voice refuses to be denied. She sings with a power and conviction on Refuge Cove that challenges listeners not to be moved by her lyrics. They not only fit the times and conditions of this moment but suggest we prepare ourselves for a very different world. It may not necessarily be the world we expected, but it is the world that we have to live in, for better or for worse.
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